Wednesday, December 24. 2008

The History of NORAD Tracking Santa

CityNews in Canada tells the 50 year old story of a wrong number posted in a paper and how the recipient (who worked for what would become NORAD) did the rest. (Some audio.) You can also read up on the Google side from a Google Elf.

Location-based Leaderboard for iPhone Apps

Remember the episode of Seinfeld where George wants to keep the Frogger game on which he holds the high score? Fast forward to today's phone-based games and there's no such thing - until now. Cambridge, Mass based Geocade is offering a platform do create location-based leaderboards for iPhone (soon Android, too and Symbian) games. The game company puts a few lines of code into it and the system keeps track using location information from GPS. Thus players know who's "tops" in the local area. The business model? "Advertising can be incorporated, with Geocade sharing the revenues with partner developers..."

The idea of competing with your dorm, school, town, in teams, etc. is interesting. So is location-based advertising to go with the app. There's a free game available to see how Geocade works; it's called "Soft Landing."

- via PocketGamer

Geospatial Holdings to Acquire Belgian Reduct Pipeline Mapping Company

Odd for this to pop just before the holiday, but that's how it goes sometimes. Geospatial Holidings is based in Pennsylvania and "is building the first accurate 3-D and GIS database of the world’s underground pipe infrastructure systems utilizing our proprietary mapping technology." Reduct is based Belgium and offers products including DuctRunner, a device that travels pipes to enabled mapping. Geospatial Holidings was their regional rep in North, South America and Australia.

- Pittsburg Live
- press release (pdf)

Off Topic: O'Reilly, Lessig Worth a Listen

NPR had two great interviews in the past few days with Tim O'Reilly and Lawrence Lessig. If you are still making sense of Web 2.0 and social media (I am), Mr. O'Reilly clears things up. If you are not familiar with the reason for copyright or Creative Commons, Mr. Lessig explains why they both came to be. These discussions were so valuable, I listened to them twice.

O'Reilly (NPR article,podcast)
Lessig (NPR article, podcast)

Wired: iPhone Fake Call Locations App = Fail

With all the location apps for the iPhone you'd think an app with the name Fake Call Locations would actually fake your location to an app that shares location information with contacts. No, the app plays sounds through your speaker that suggest a location (club, traffic, etc.) to the person you call. In the Wired test the recipient of the call couldn't even hear the sounds. The app sells for $1.